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Is it inevitable that due to rapid population growth millions of people will die?

Is it inevitable that millions of people will have to die due to population growth?

  • Yes

    Votes: 14 35.9%

  • No

    Votes: 25 64.1%
  • Total voters
    39
Slyhunter said:
I don't have sex, I don't have kids. It worked for me.
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Yup, but for most people it doesn't work so well for very long. Most people are going to have sex. If you have sex, there's eventually going to be a pregnancy unless stuff is snipped.
 
Slyhunter said:
Then don't have sex.
Problem solved.
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Hooray! Problem solved!

Let's solve some other problems while we're at it. Don't murder people. Hooray! The problem of murder has been solved! Don't rape people. Hooray! The problem of rape has been solved! Don't steal. Hooray! The problem of theft has been solved!

Way to go team! Unwanted pregnancies, murder, rape, and theft are ne longer problems for the human race! Hooray!
 
Goshin said:
Yup, but for most people it doesn't work so well for very long. Most people are going to have sex. If you have sex, there's eventually going to be a pregnancy unless stuff is snipped.
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Then don't have sex.
Problem solved.
 
the_recruit said:
Hooray! Problem solved!

Let's solve some other problems while we're at it. Don't murder people. Hooray! The problem of murder has been solved! Don't rape people. Hooray! The problem of rape has been solved! Don't steal. Hooray! The problem of theft has been solved!

Way to go team! Unwanted pregnancies, murder, rape, and theft are ne longer problems for the human race! Hooray!
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People who do the deed should pay for their own consequences. If you don't want to pay the consequences then don't do the deed.
Don't want to go to jail for murder then don't committ murder.
Don't want to have starving kids that you can't afford to feed then don't make kids.
It is that simple.
If you do the crime you do the time.
If you have kids you can't afford to feed you get to watch them starve to death.
It is that simple.
 
Slyhunter said:
People who do the deed should pay for their own consequences. If you don't want to pay the consequences then don't do the deed.
Don't want to go to jail for murder then don't committ murder.
Don't want to have starving kids that you can't afford to feed then don't make kids.
It is that simple.
If you do the crime you do the time.
If you have kids you can't afford to feed you get to watch them starve to death.
It is that simple.
Click to expand...

Hooray! Problem solved!
 
McjaqqerSwaqqer said:
One of my friends recently got into a heated debate with me as to weather or not millions of people are going to have to die as a result of rapid population growth. His logic was that as resources become depleted, and demand grows, people will be forced to fight over the remaining resources and in the process will have to kill each other. I however disagreed. I stated that I understood the premise behind which this scenario would take place. However I argued the inevitability of this situation ever presenting itself. I stated that through technological and intellectual achievements we will have the potential to maintain a larger more robust population indefinitely. My logic was the following.... Today we live in a world of 7 billion people. 300 years ago we could never have hoped to maintain such a large population effectively. However due to technological and other developments we are able to. Why must this trend which has been going on since the dawn of men stop now?..... My friend went on to argue that the killing of millions of people might not be such a bad thing because it would help others survive more efficiently and allow them to have more resources. HE ARGUED THAT THE DEATH OF MILLIONS WOULD BE BETTER FOR MANKIND. To this I replied, who decides who dies and who doesn't. I also replied saying that he was out of his mind. I just want to receive reassurance that I was not the one with faulty logic because I was in a setting in which 5 people were supporting his thinking and only two other people were supporting mine. (The people who supported the person with this reasoning supported him primarily because they believe he is some freaken diety and because they don't like me)
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I think everybody living today will be dead by November 3, 2134. That's over 7 billion people.
 
Cyrylek said:
It would make sense if we were locust or even sheep. But we happen to be a species that creates and develops "resources". Not coincidentally, life is just fine in densely populated Holland, and not so comfortable in near-empty Ethiopia. It is about good government, culture and infrastructures, not about how many people are there. The more, the better, as long as they behave.
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We don't create resources and this isn't about population density in individual regions. You know resources can be transported from one area to another, right?
 
Slyhunter said:
People who do the deed should pay for their own consequences. If you don't want to pay the consequences then don't do the deed.
Don't want to go to jail for murder then don't committ murder.
Don't want to have starving kids that you can't afford to feed then don't make kids.
It is that simple.
If you do the crime you do the time.
If you have kids you can't afford to feed you get to watch them starve to death.
It is that simple.
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Ladies and gentlemen, libertarianism.
 
Deuce said:
We don't create resources and this isn't about population density in individual regions. You know resources can be transported from one area to another, right?
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Sure we do create resources: electricity doesn't flow through some natural conducting rivers; or compare the productivity of agriculture today and even 50 years ago: we bind carbon and other elements in a way useful for us that wasn't there before. Particular forms of raw materials are limited in nature, of course; but there's no reason to think that our ability to come up alternatives and improvements is limited as well.
 
Sherman123 said:
Neo-malthusians need to go away. Forever.
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Hey, I learned a new word! Now all I have to do if figure how to use it in day to day conversations. :lol:
 
Sherman123 said:
Neo-malthusians need to go away. Forever.
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Exactly!

If they all committed mass suicide then that would alleviate their overpopulation concerns in one fell swoop.

Maybe we could make a holiday out of it where one day each year it is perfectly legal to murder everyone who has professed that the planet is "overpopulated".

Problem solved.

Call it the Anti-Hypocrite day.
 
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Phys251 said:
If we cease to talk about world hunger, suddenly everyone will have food. /snark
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It worked with California's huge budget deficit, why not world hunger?
 
McjaqqerSwaqqer said:
One of my friends recently got into a heated debate with me as to weather or not millions of people are going to have to die as a result of rapid population growth. His logic was that as resources become depleted, and demand grows, people will be forced to fight over the remaining resources and in the process will have to kill each other.
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Your friend is sadly underinformed. Due to decreasing birthrates, we are actually currently entering Peak Baby (if you will). From here on out growth in the human populace is not exponential, but rather stabilizes, ages, and begins to shrink.
 
Ray410 said:
It worked with California's huge budget deficit, why not world hunger?
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I'm pretty sure that California's budget surplus emerged from other causes. ;)
 
With or without population growth millions of people are going to die, put they are not going to die because of population growth.

People die every day all over this planet for various reasons and that is not likely to stop any time soon.
 
Fisher said:
When we run out of Phosphorous the world will be a radically different place.
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 That will be our grandkids and great grandkids problem. Nothing will change until lazy people suddenly cannot get cheap, abundant food.
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Phosphorus is a fairly abundant mineral which we will not run out of any time soon.
 
shrubnose said:
Phosphorus is a fairly abundant mineral which we will not run out of any time soon.
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The "peak phosphorus" is one of the early chicken-little favorites, historically. There was a veritable panic - and violence - when guano (seabird excrement, a good source of nitrogen as well) started running out on the Pacific coast of South America (see: Chincha Islands War).

FDR made speeches is 1938, calling for a halt in exports of the precious commodity (fortunately, by 1938 the FDR speeches were well over their peak as hot commodity, and nobody paid much attention).

The current estimate of phosphate rock (and those estimates always go up) is in the region of 70 billion tons - enough to last for centuries, even if the fertilizer use stays in the current mode (which involves huge amounts of waste) and the population keeps growing at the rates of the previous century - and neither is even a possibility. And we are talking only about the immediately useful apatite-rich stuff. Phosphorus as such is an element that doesn't disappear - it is perfectly recyclable.

I guess, some countries may begin worrying at some point that 85% of the world's phosphate rock is located in just three places: China, Morocco, and USA. Well, be nice to us. :)
 
Northern Light said:
The current state of the world's ecosystems really paints a different picture.

The number of humans doesn't matter as much as the kind of lifestyle the humans want to live. Countries like the USA are resource hogs and can't live without their luxuries. If every human on earth lived in more realistic proportion to the annual natural bounty, we could sustain our current numbers.
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This is the central fallacy of the left. Resources aren't a zero-sum game. No need for such a scarcity mindset. People CREATE wealth. The more people, the more the pie grows for everyone.
 
McjaqqerSwaqqer said:
Why must this trend which has been going on since the dawn of men stop now?.....
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It hasn't been going on since the dawn if mankind. Flat growth has dominated mankinds history. Each technological breakthrough we've had that's led to more efficient extraction of resources has led to rapid growth before hitting a ceiling and collapsing.

The industrial revolution has been unique in that no ceiling has been hit yet, and while we may not he bacteria in a Petri dish, we're still not omniscient enough to know what will present the next ceiling and avoid it. You'd have to be a betting man to predict unstoppable/exponential growth.

Your Malthusian friends solution is pretty stupid though.
 
McjaqqerSwaqqer said:
One of my friends recently got into a heated debate with me as to weather or not millions of people are going to have to die as a result of rapid population growth. His logic was that as resources become depleted, and demand grows, people will be forced to fight over the remaining resources and in the process will have to kill each other. I however disagreed. I stated that I understood the premise behind which this scenario would take place. However I argued the inevitability of this situation ever presenting itself. I stated that through technological and intellectual achievements we will have the potential to maintain a larger more robust population indefinitely. My logic was the following.... Today we live in a world of 7 billion people. 300 years ago we could never have hoped to maintain such a large population effectively. However due to technological and other developments we are able to. Why must this trend which has been going on since the dawn of men stop now?..... My friend went on to argue that the killing of millions of people might not be such a bad thing because it would help others survive more efficiently and allow them to have more resources. HE ARGUED THAT THE DEATH OF MILLIONS WOULD BE BETTER FOR MANKIND. To this I replied, who decides who dies and who doesn't. I also replied saying that he was out of his mind. I just want to receive reassurance that I was not the one with faulty logic because I was in a setting in which 5 people were supporting his thinking and only two other people were supporting mine. (The people who supported the person with this reasoning supported him primarily because they believe he is some freaken diety and because they don't like me)
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The current trends we are seeing seem to be in line with the UN's global population predictions. (United Nations News Centre - World population projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 – UN report) (The end of global population growth may be almost here — and a lot sooner than the UN thinks | AEIdeas)
 
Muhammed said:
Maybe we could make a holiday out of it where one day each year it is perfectly legal to murder everyone who has professed that the planet is "overpopulated".
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Wow, talk about not being able to deal with reality.
 
ecofarm said:
Wow, talk about not being able to deal with reality.
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Do you deny that this holiday would instantly lower the population?

After all isn't population your big concern?
 
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